New York

18th September 2017
11:30am - 2:00pm

STARTUP TOUR 2017

The leading competition for French startups in North America

Final Competition

Taking place in New York on September 18th, 2017

After a series of local competitions held across the United States and Canada in June 2017, eight startups have been selected to compete in the finals of the Startup Tour.
The juries that chose these distinguished startups were composed of entrepreneurs, investors, innovators, and changemakers located in North America. Mounir Mahjoubi, French Minister for Digital Affairs, Roland Lescure, member of the French Parliament, Gérard Araud, Ambassador of France to the United States and Anne-Claire Legendre, Consul General of France in New York will attend the awards ceremony, demonstrating their support for French startups and the success of French Tech internationally.

- A $20,000 voucher to be used on a selection of OVH cloud solutions, the startup will be supported by a solutions architect to choose and deploy it's cloud infrastructure. OVH Digital Launch Pad will promote the startup (events, social media..)

- Business acceleration program with BNP Paribas experts

- Mentoring sessions

- Consultations with lawyers and accountants, and even more benefits..

Selected Startups

The Jury

Prominent experts in business and the tech industry will select the winner of the 1st Prize

Virginie MorgonDeputy CEO @ Eurazeo

Mrs Morgon oversees the firm’s investments and divestitures, and helps identify, accelerate and enhance the transformation potential of the companies in which Eurazeo invests. She also serves on the Board of Directors of Asmodee, Moncler, and Desigual and is an independent Board member of L’Oreal and Vivendi. She is Vice Chair of the Paris Committee for Human Rights Watch and is a founding member of the Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society.

Michel-Alain ProchGroup SEVP & CEO North American Operations @ Atos

After several executive positions held at Deloitte and Hermes in Paris, London and New-York, Michel-Alain Proch joined Atos in 2006 and is appointed Group Chief Financial Officer in 2007, later on supervising Finance, IT, Bid Control, Risk and Security. In 2015, he becomes Senior Executive Vice-President and one of the three members of the General Management Committee led by Thierry Breton, Chairman and CEO. Michel-Alain supervises globally IT and Security and is the CEO of Atos in North America, based in New-York and Dallas. In these two capacities, he is a key contributor to the Atos Digital Transformation, particularly in Hybrid Cloud, Application Transformation and Big Data & Cybersecurity

Bruno D'IlliersDeputy Head & COO @ BNP Paribas CIB Americas

Mr. D'illiers is responsible for overseeing the following BNP Paribas departments: Finance & Tax, Information Technology & Operations, Governance & Control, and Branch Management. He also is a Board Member of all major non-banking subsidiaries of BNP Paribas with responsibilities for operational issues.

Alain BernardPresident & CEO @ Van Cleef & Arpels Americas

M. Bernard covers the activities of the House in both North and South America, leading the development of awareness, business and teams in the region. Mr. Bernard has strong roots at the Richemont Group, having joined Cartier in 1998 and has since gradually occupied positions with responsibilities within the geographies where operates.

Franck MoisonVice Chairman @ Colgate Palmolive

With 30 years of Colgate experience leading product development and sourcing worldwide, he is one of the industry most distinguished leaders in consumer product innovation, strategic marketing, acquisitions and emerging market business development. Among his numerous responsibilities, M. Moison also serves as a Director of French American Chamber of Commerce.

Herve BrunetCEO & Co-Founder @ stickyADS.tv

Executive with broad international experience in Europe, Middle-East & Africa and Asia Pacific, M.Brunet has led multinational teams to expand revenue in complex and competitive markets while implementing organizations that would sustain the growth. FreeWheel, a Comcast subsidiary since 2014, has acquired stickyADS.tv in May, 2016 for a non-disclosed amount.

Fabrice GrindaCo-Founder @ FJ Labs

M. Grinda is among the world’s leading Internet entrepreneurs and investors, he has successfully transposed and adapted business ideas. He is also a prolific angel investor with over 150 angel investments in various companies. M. Grinda has also served as CEO for three multinational companies and has an impressive track record as an early investor in Alibaba, Lending Club, Delivery Hero and Brightroll.

Thierry DelaporteGroup Executive Board member and Head of Financial Services @ Capgemini

Thierry Delaporte is no stranger to transformation. Mr. Delaporte has held various roles since joining Capgemini in 1995 and has been a dynamic force behind company operations and strategic planning in several key businesses across four continents. The impact of his contributions to several key transformation programs continues to influence the business, which celebrates its 50th anniversary in October 2017.

Alexis Lê-QuôcCO-FOUNDER & CTO @ Datadog

Alexis brings a strong focus on technical elegance and operational efficiency to Datadog. Prior to founding Datadog, Alexis Lê-Quôc served as the Director of Operations for Wireless Generation where he built the team and infrastructure that served more than 4 million students in 49 states. As a member of the original “devops” movement, Alexis spent several years as a software engineer at IBM Research, Neomeo and Orange. Alexis holds an MS, CS from the Ecole Centrale Paris and has presented sessions on cloud monitoring and server performance at conferences including AWS re:Invent, Monitorama, DevOpsDays, Velocity, and PyCon.

Renaud DeraisonCO-FOUNDER & CTO @ Tenable Network Security

Renaud Deraison is known in the global security community as the father of the Nessus® vulnerability scanner.
Renaud co-founded Tenable Network Security in 2002. Before Tenable, Renaud was the primary author of the Nessus vulnerability scanner – releasing the first version of Nessus when he was 17. He worked for SolSoft and founded his own computing security consulting company, Nessus Consulting S.A.R.L.
Renaud continues to contribute to the global security community. He is a member of the editorial board for the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures Organization. In 2013, he received the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for defense and security.

After the Show

Private Lunch

Following the awards ceremony, there will be a VIP lunch for finalists, members of the jury, mentors, partners and sponsors. This will be an exclusive opportunity for attendees to engage with their professional.

They lead us

Leading members of the French business community in the US, they are C-Level executives, investors, and recognized entrepreneurs.
They support the Startup Tour by mentoring the startup in preparing the Grand Final, but also the the winning startups throughout their year-long US expansion:

Premium sponsors

A Startup Contest on Steroids

About the Event

FrenchFounders and French Morning have come together to organize the first edition of Startup Tour, the leading competition for Francophone startups developing in North America.

From the 200 applications submitted, 35 startups were chosen as semi-finalists to compete in Startup Tour 2017. In June, seven local competitions in seven cities in North America launched the Startup Tour. The winners from New York, Miami, Boston, Chicago, Montreal, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, along with the winner of a startup competition in Paris, will now compete in the finals in New York. Currently, the eight finalists are preparing their pitches for the final competition with additional mentoring and coaching by approximately 50 people in the North American entrepreneurial ecosystem & partners that supports the Startup Tour.

Mounir Mahjoubi, French Minister for Digital Affairs, Roland Lescure, member of the French Parliament, Gérard Araud, Ambassador of France to the United States and Anne-Claire Legendre, Consul General of France in New York will attend the awards ceremony, demonstrating their support for French startups and the success of French Tech internationally.

Startup Selection

A committee of industry experts, investors, executives, and educators has reviewed the 200 applications and select the 35 competitors, regarding the following criterias (the startup had to meet at least 2 of the following criteria):

- Be working on a new technology, product, or service, or an innovative application of an existing technology

- Have a proof of concept, a prototype, scientific validation of your claim, or minimum viable product (MVP)

- Be a team composed of two or more people working on the startup full-time

- Have raised in angel and/or seed capital

- Be working on a project that would have a significant impact on your target industry, and society or the environment in general

- Still be in a growth phase

In addition, the startup had to meet these 2 mandatory criteria:

- One of the startup's founders must be a French speaker

- The startup must have a presence in the city in which they are competing at the local level, or plan to establish a presence there in the near future

Contact us

About FrenchFounders

FrenchFounders is the world's leading business community dedicated to French-speaking CEOs, Top Executives, Founders and Investors.
With more than 1,900 members in 35 countries, FrenchFounders allows its members - all leaders in their industry - to meet, share experiences and grow their business thanks to personalized introductions and thematic events.

About French Morning

French Morning is the leading web magazine for French speakers living in or traveling to the United States or Canada.
They now have seven local editions: New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami, Texas, Washington DC, and Montreal. French Morning also publishes Frenchly for the large audience of Anglophone Francophiles around the world.